Mit Realschulabschluss an die Spitze des Fensterherstellers Schüco: Andreas Engelhardt

That was my first investment decision in the company, by the way, to build our own showroom. Schüco didn't have one at all. When I asked to see the products, samples were taken out of the closet and placed on the table, which doesn't work at all. My grandmother always said, 'What you can't touch, feel, and see, no one will buy.' She was right. So we built a beautiful showroom. You are the personally liable and authorized managing partner of Schüco International KG. Perhaps you can say a bit more about that. It's a very solid German legal form, the limited partnership. It doesn't exist as often anymore, but there are still family businesses, especially large ones, that are structured this way. They are run by external managers, and as the personally liable partner, you don't have shares, but you are fully liable with your private assets without any upper limit, unlimited. That's quite comfortable. We close the holes in the house, so to speak: doors, windows, and facades. What is naturally clear in our agenda or DNA, I would almost say, and I have strongly reinforced since I've been here, is that we are aligning our business model to be more sustainable than it was in the past. The buildings of today and tomorrow are the raw material reservoirs of the future. Absolutely, we have no unlimited resources, and our business model wasn't developed that way back then.

Remember, yes, I was, well, clearly, I was a lazy student and got my intermediate secondary school certificate, as it was called back then, at a very typical Realschule in my hometown of Wuppertal. This Realschule had one of the best reputations. Back then, in cities, it was like that: we went to the gymnasium and to this Realschule. And I managed, perhaps barely, to get in there. My mother pushed hard at the time for me to go there, and thank God it worked out. But honestly, I never liked school much; it was all too slow for me.

My mother had a flower shop for over 50 years, and I spent my first pocket money by delivering flowers on my bicycle. Do you remember what you did with your first money? I guess I bought a burger with it and went to Max, and perhaps saved some part. I've always done that. Okay, and when you just said your mother had a flower shop, she was a bit entrepreneurial and commercial, then with a different standard than you have today, but did that shape you? Yes, it totally shaped me. My parents, I come from a very simple background. My parents are very simple; my mother is a saleswoman and florist, my father a trained weaver, very simple people who lived in two rooms and 55 square meters in Wuppertal. Everything had to be earned through their own effort, and for me, it was clear very early on to find my way alone. The parents were always in the business, and I was too in the afternoons. I did homework more or less gladly, rather less. And yes, that shaped me totally because the down-to-earthness has remained to this day, knowing that you are successful not because you are such a great guy, but because the people who work with you do a good job. Is that also the core message you would give to a young person: don't lose your down-to-earthness? Yes, absolutely. Down-to-earthness sometimes needs to be explained. If you speak, you know what it is, but it sometimes needs explanation. But it is important that you never lose sight of the fact that in a company or with what you do, you can only be successful if the people around you, your colleagues, work with pleasure and joy and are also successful. That humility, I would almost say, you should never lose.

So, I'm different. Others went to sports clubs and played soccer, and I was always, very early on, in the schools I attended, from Realschule onwards to commercial school, I was always class president or student spokesperson, but not so gladly and not so well. Yet gladly, but not so well. I wasn't so good in school, but being student spokesperson, I found great. Because I could organize things well, and I could stand up for people who couldn't do it so well themselves. I always found that good, and I was also always chosen somehow. Someone would say, 'Let Andreas do it,' and I never said no. That's another story I like to give to our young apprentices: when you're asked to do something, don't think too long and say, 'Sure, I'll do it.' Whether it's appropriate and fits the career goal doesn't matter that much. Just do it and say, I'll learn how to handle it. I always did that, and it naturally shapes you.

Absolutely, it was similar for me. I believe that's also where I'm a salesman from the heart, from the soul. Customer contact is my world, and I'm also a people person. I enjoy doing business with people on a personal level, and I still firmly believe that businesses are created on a personal level and secured long-term that way. It was the same in school. I was always the good talker, and I can remember well, I didn't always have the best grades. I was always great in politics, great in German, in math it was okay. I believe I even had some F's on my report card. I can never tell that today when we meet with our apprentices. I meet regularly with them, and when I tell them that I failed the eighth grade because I was so diligent, meaning not at all, our trainers always roll their eyes. Please don't take this as an example. But that's also for us in the company; we don't search for ones with only ones on the report card. We search for types, women and men, young women and men who have edges and corners, who are something special, real types, eager to shape things. That's so important because only then can I make a good contribution in the company, not through good grades.

There was a pot of money in my hometown, and I was student spokesperson for the whole school. I didn't belong to the left-leaning student unions like all other schools; I was rather the more bourgeois, in my opinion, normal person. There was a pot where 50,000 marks were distributed to the schools, and the left-wing groups always allocated it all to themselves. I found that totally unfair because nothing was left for us. So I organized in the student union and disrupted the process. Then the money was distributed more fairly to our school, which everyone found great. We financed a big carnival party from it, and everyone was happy. And that's how my interest began. I wasn't politically influenced from home; my parents were always CDU voters because they came from the self-employed sector, but they didn't bring me there. Then I engaged in the Junge Union and did street campaigns instead of soccer. Until today, but I don't do that anymore. I still have a network; many of my former comrades are still in politics, some in high offices, up to the state prime minister. We still know each other, and that's quite nice to maintain, even if we don't see each other often. But it was always clear to me that I would choose economics; I wanted to be economically active, stand on my own feet, buy my first car, and not study anymore. I had no desire for school anyway.

What training did you do? I'm a trained industrial clerk and then taught for two and a half years, went to the military, and actually did 15 months of civil service. My old boss, and that's also a message to our managers, he let me get involved in everything. He basically said, 'Andreas, do it,' and I never said no, regardless of what it was. And I learned a lot from that. You need these supporters to develop such a career as you did. Yes, definitely. Our young people can only develop if we let them and if we really trust them to do things where they don't have much experience yet, and that we stand behind them when they make a mistake or things don't go well. If I hadn't had that chance, I certainly wouldn't have developed the same way.

Yes, absolutely. Why did it shape me? I am a deeply freedom-loving person from my innermost being. I quickly see injustice and have always strongly advocated for minorities out of deep conviction. That could be as student spokesperson, class president, up to company leader. We have 17 different nationalities in our company now at Schüco, and that shaped me a lot. In that time, there were things like the NATO dual-track decision in the early 1980s. There was a group of 100,000 young people on the Bonn Hofgartenwiese against the deployment of missiles, and I belonged to those who, with 100,000 people the next weekend, went on the streets for the deployment. As if history had rewritten itself, I was deeply convinced that we can only defend our freedom if we meet the Russians, the Soviets at eye level. That shaped me totally, until today.

I had that until today. One shouldn't claim that for oneself, but others say that about you. I have a high antenna for when someone is treated unjustly and stand in front of them. In the company, I also ensure that we live this as a culture. That's particularly important to me.

That was in Wuppertal, actually an automotive supplier, plastic injection molding. I also drove forklifts and went with my boss as a trainee to the big buyers. He took me to the large automotive buyers at executive level. Then, as a second-year apprentice, I sat next to my boss and was allowed to listen. Was that the time when people smoked cigars in the conference room? No, that was later. Not then. You grew up in the automotive industry, the supplier industry. Exactly. On any case, calculation absolutely. I learned very early what design-to-cost means. I learned cost-cutting very early. I'm not a saver by nature, but I look at these things extremely because it always accompanied me. We were always under pressure to earn money; we always had to ensure that the prices we quoted to customers weren't our wish prices. You always had to do something. And it was common that if you got an automotive supply contract for five or seven years, you had to agree to savings every year. That means you had to sign off on 3% or 5% price reduction even though you didn't know how.

Yes, that exists. It's a very solid German legal form, the limited partnership. It doesn't exist as often anymore, but there are still family businesses, especially large ones, that are structured this way. They are run by external managers, and as the personally liable partner, you don't have shares, but you are fully liable with your private assets without any upper limit, unlimited. That's quite comfortable. You have to ask yourself, did they give you schnapps for that? Perhaps I was in a euphoria because I was totally excited about the company, the Schüco brand, and I was totally happy that they trusted me with this role. It's a great thing to lead such a company and develop it further with colleagues. But that's the legal form, a limited partnership. Then you're personally liable without limit. When I explain this abroad, many question marks appear over people's heads, saying how can he be so stupid? But that's how it is, and it's also a very solid arrangement for business partners. A company is always well-financed; we have a high equity ratio. We are, I often say, in crisis, in the thick of it. This has been strongly confirmed in the financial crisis or the COVID crisis, that a family holding the shares stands by the company for the long term and isn't stock-listed where, after a major downturn, it's easy to say, yes, one can do that if one wants. There are many possibilities.

No, I've seen six or seven companies in my life so far, not that many. They were always family businesses. You get a certain barnyard smell, so to speak, that you know how to handle family businesses because it's different. I believe family businesses have something very special. They have their own cultures. The family values things that perhaps aren't always the third decimal place, but it's run in the sense of the family, that people are at the center. If there's an economic crisis in some areas, you watch closely how you treat people. That plays a big role, and it's something I totally identify with. But it's also, at the same time, sometimes the curse, so I'm talking a bit about the blessing now, and the curse, so to speak, or the challenge, that the owner, the family, might say, 'Andreas, you've done great, but now we're turning right because it's our company.' I don't want to use the word curse because it's no curse at all. It depends a bit on how you also convince the shareholders or can convince them that the further development of the company is on the right path. And I've always had the luck that the shareholders gave me a lot of leeway, on the one hand, to do that, a lot of leeway because they aren't operationally active. They've committed in their governance to being very interested in business development but not operationally. More than once a quarter, let me explain the annual report? No, it runs more intensively. We have our regular advisory board meetings, of course, like any other company of our size, or supervisory board meetings in other cases. But there are also regular meetings where I have the time to explain or assess things where I don't have a final opinion yet. I place great value on taking the shareholders along, hearing their opinion, and deriving from that. I have to decide at the end of the day; it's my job to propose how to proceed. I do that, but this exchange is very, very valuable. Sometimes a million-euro investment has a three-minute discussion, but another topic with much less value but high cultural significance gets an hour of discussion and exchange. That's family business, and it makes it so exciting and challenging for you. You've been with the company since 2012.

I feel like an entrepreneur, as if it were my own company, even though it isn't my company, but felt and definitely. That's my own baby, and I suffer and rejoice with it, of course. Deeply, deeply, I don't always show it. I believe it's also an important task in crisis situations to stay calm. That's something I also learned in my first job. There were already automotive crises very early on, always coming and going, now yes. And the company is naturally in trouble, and you learn to breathe, think for two minutes, or perhaps sleep a night on it. But you also learn how important it is what you radiate to others. The man and woman at the machine look closely if the boss is pale in the face and the corners of his mouth are always turned down, and if he really means what he says and is authentic. People notice that immediately, or if he's feeding you a line. I can really emphasize that, regardless of how big the company is, the topic of if you have a bad mood for weeks because financing isn't there or whatever for projects, how that spreads. You don't need to be addressed, and lying and saying, 'No, it's not so,' no, no, you don't need to say that. People notice immediately if it fits or not, and that's good, and they also see very quickly if you're authentic and if you live what you say. Yes, practicing what you preach, or as they say, preaching wine and drinking water, or the opposite. I find that incredibly important that in your own doing and how you live, it fits together.

The history of Granini is a quick one. The founder of Schüco sold the company in the 1950s to an aluminum profile supplier, Otto Fuchs, which is our current sister company. Then he wanted to do something new with the money and bottled the first Granini juices at our headquarters in our showroom, which means Welcome Forum today. Exactly at that spot where we are now—that was my first investment decision, by the way, in the company, to build such a showroom, which Schüco didn't have at all. When I asked to see the products, samples were taken out of the closet and placed on the table, which doesn't work at all. My grandmother always said, 'What you can't touch, feel, and see, no one will buy.' She was right. So we built a beautiful showroom. What I actually want to say is that our company founder, who had nothing to do with the family anymore and didn't before, bottled the first Granini juices with us, and then made himself independent with the money he got from Schüco. And our company made a very clever decision back then to acquire and buy the company as a supplier of raw materials. Cool. We'll be 75 years old next year. That's already 75 years ago. And at the same time, as an outsider, I would say it's still a very young company for the revenue you make, over two billion. Two billion, yes, worldwide. We're represented in 80 countries with about 6,800 employees worldwide. Another announcement, and then from the city of Bielefeld, which doesn't really exist. I always drive past it and forget to get off because no one says in the train. I came back on Friday, again from North Rhine-Westphalia, but next time, stop and have a coffee with me at the Welcome Forum. That's now agreed. Sealed. Very gladly.

The platform was naturally laid in recent years for this market strength, especially in Germany, the home market, where we have particularly high market shares. We close the holes in the house, so to speak: doors, windows, and facades. And that's what we, and that is actually so, what is in our agenda or DNA, I would almost say, naturally clear, and I have strongly reinforced since I've been here, is that we are aligning our business model to be more sustainable than it was in the past. The buildings of today and tomorrow are the raw material reservoirs of the future. Absolutely, we have no unlimited resources, and our business model wasn't developed that way back then. Back then, it was the window and door manufacturer, the window and door system house. We've always been—we started with shop windows and then doors in Porta Westfalica. Those were the first steps, and from there, we've become a broad specialist worldwide: fire protection, security, high security, burglar protection, and even break-out protection. We also equip prisons. Yes, so not only burglar protection but also break-out protection. Now, a bit cynical, I have Schüco windows at home. Yes, very nice, thank you for the order. You're welcome; we live on that. I'm very happy to sponsor you and your team. Very nice, and then I say, okay, the person in prison also has, yes, or our daughter, our security division. Yes, that's what it does, unfortunately, becoming more and more because the world is totally tense. For example, against dynamite, bomb attacks, explosive attacks, bullet resistance. Everywhere where people are at risk, we protect lives. That's emerged in recent years. We've also specialized a lot. From Schüco, it's expected that we also master special topics, up to high-end residential construction, large sliding systems, panorama sliding systems. And that's certainly a change and expansion of our business model, thinking circularly. What does that mean? Circularly thinking means that we think—we didn't before, we installed and then our work was done. Today, we think service for life. We also have our own service area that supplements our customers with service, repair work, and so on. We think about dismantling. Today, objects are already being dismantled, and the windows, so to speak, aluminum windows last 50, 60, 70 years, plastic windows 20, 30, 40. And we take them back and return the raw material so that new windows can be made from it. That's much further thought than 10 years ago. Absolutely, and I believe timely as well. Would you say today, it's easy to say, of course, but getting there, yes, alternative-free. Alternative-free. It's quite an own business model that you take them back and pay back or not? No, no. I must say clearly, we're investing now until I can calculate it economically. It will take some time, but I find we have no other option than to develop it further. We have now joint ventures with companies like Revindo that can guarantee collection, better than we can. We have a joint company for the plastic sector that does that, then recycles and returns it. We'll do the same for aluminum. And yes, and that's the expansion: thinking about the building circularly for its entire lifespan.

No, no, it's already. My conviction is that if we didn't do it, let me put the question this way, would we still be participating in the market in 10 years? I'm not so sure. To put it in perspective, you're market leader, as they say. What makes you the market leader? Is it by revenue, meaning we have the largest revenue or most customers, or what makes you the market leader? Well, now, for example in Europe or in Germany, it's how high is the market share of the relevant market, and in Germany, we're naturally quite far ahead. But a market leader also does more: the brand stands for quality, for longevity, for service. We have hundreds of people worldwide who always come when something doesn't work. We also make mistakes, and the customer makes mistakes, of course. But we quickly put things right. And there are many—I say hundreds of people—who then step up in such a case and say, 'Now let's first ensure the customer is satisfied.' And that's an incredible strength we have; no one else has that.